Purpose As social media use continues to increase, particularly among adolescents, understanding its impact on mental health is becoming increasingly urgent. This study explored the relationships between alexithymia, fear of missing out (FoMO), excessive social media use, and psychiatric symptoms in a clinical adolescent sample, hypothesizing that alexithymia would be linked to higher problematic social media use, with FoMO, internalizing and externalizing problems as potential mediators. It also examined whether these variables differed based on daily use of popular social media platforms. Methods A total of 197 participants aged 14–18 years (141 71.5% female, 56 28.5% male) were recruited from child and adolescent psychiatric outpatient clinics in two public hospitals. Participants were interviewed by a child and adolescent psychiatrist and then asked to complete the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, the Alexithymia Questionnaire, the Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale, and the FoMO Scale. Results The direct effect of alexithymia on problematic social media use was not statistically significant ( b = 0.13, 95% CI −0.03, 0.28); however, the total indirect effect was significant ( b = 0.20, p < 0.05), indicating full mediation. Specifically, alexithymia did not exert a direct effect on FoMO or problematic social media use, but its association with problematic social media use emerged through internalizing problems, externalizing problems, and FoMO levels ( p < 0.05). Conclusions These findings highlight the complex emotional and behavioral contexts underlying problematic social media use among adolescents and underscore the need for interventions that address emotional processing difficulties and comorbid psychopathology in this population.
Serdengeçti et al. (2026) studied this question.